


Snippets

by ArdeaJestin



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Letters, Missing Scene, Misunderstandings, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 23:44:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16820830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArdeaJestin/pseuds/ArdeaJestin
Summary: In which Tina reads a magazine, accepts an offer, and gets a haircut.(Set between FBAWTFT and CoG.)





	Snippets

“So, what can I do for you?”

“I want… something different. A change.”

“Hair? Makeup?”

“Everything. I mean – both. And nails, please.”

“Lovely. You just relax now, we’ll take care of everything.”

Tina closes her eyes and tries to settle in the moment. This is supposed to be fun, refreshing, a treat. She’s sitting in a lovely velvet chair in a lovely salon that smells of rose soap and powder. It’s an unfamiliar smell, yes, and she doesn’t quite know how to place her shoulders, or what to do with her hands, or indeed how to simply sit still for the next two hours while witches in pale green blouses sashay around her, but this is what she needs to do.

“I think you would look simply _darling_ with a straight bob,” her hairdresser says, studying her carefully. “And bangs.”

“Bangs? Are you certain -”

“Trust me. You’ll have all the fellows fawning over you when I’m done.”

Tina imagines a pack of men following her around, tripping over each other trying to get to her, and the image is at once ridiculous and slightly terrifying. She doesn’t need a pack, she only needs one. Although who that _one_ is supposed to be is a whole other problem.

“Is this for a special occasion?” the hairdresser continues, trying to make smalltalk as she flips through a book of spells.

Tina gives a nervous little laugh. “I’m not sure yet.”

“Well then, let’s make it one!”

A minute and a wave of her wand later, tiny scissors start to snip away at Tina’s hair and she watches it fall in curled clippings on the floor. It’s almost like she’s shedding, and it’s a liberating feeling even though she knows not everything is as skin deep.

*

_My dear Tina,_

_Quite a mess with the Puffskeins today, they’ve started to shed – loads and loads of hair everywhere in the menagerie, but at least Dougle seems to be all the happier for it as he’s using it to make his nest nice and comfortable (a sign perhaps that he’s finally ready to mate, will have to investigate further). I’m always in awe of the way nothing ever goes to waste in nature, yet another thing we could learn from our fellow creatures, I’m sure you’ll agree. (I’m sorry, that does sound rather presumptuous of me, doesn’t it? Forgive my clumsiness, I was rather trying to express how I feel we are kindred spirits, in this respect as in others.)_

The letters are what one might call _rambling_ , but what Tina likes to call _flowing_. It’s a limpid, disorderly, uninterrupted stream from one end of the page to another, driven on by Newt’s graceful, slanted longhand. He never scratches out words or bothers to blot the ink, sometimes repeating himself or writing in circles, yet Tina delights in this imperfection. It’s so like him not to bother, to shirk what others would consider correct letter etiquette, and she likes to think there's nothing he would hold back from her. Her letters, in comparison, are brief and painstakingly practiced to the point of sounding stiff.

_My dear Newt,_

_I was very glad to receive your last letter, it was a welcome respite. The Ministry has been working us all to the bone lately, and I feel like I haven’t seen the sunlight in a while, as it’s still dark when I leave for work and already dark when I return. Thankfully, Queenie isn’t nagging me about how I shouldn’t do so much overtime, though she still regularly berates me for snacking instead of eating proper meals._

She wishes she could write what she really wants to tell him: that the short winter days drag on forever because she can’t stop thinking about him, that she’s never had much of an appetite but that missing him so terribly is making it worse, that she’s counting the days until… until what? There’s no clear end to her longing.

_Dearest Newt, I’m going mad not knowing when we’ll see each other again. I read your letters over and over, at night in bed, thinking it might make the distance between us more bearable, when actually it makes me ache to hear your voice even more._

If she had any sort of nerve, she would come out with it, but she knows herself too well to think she could somehow pull it off. She’s never even asked anyone out on a date, and a passionate declaration of infatuation necessitates some sort of learning curve.

*

“Say Goldstein, I was thinking...”

When Achilles Tolliver walks up briskly to her desk one Wednesday afternoon, Tina is expecting anything but what comes out of his mouth after she sets her pen down and looks up at him.

“How about you and I go out for drinks sometime?”

She blinks, glances around to see if someone else has heard – perhaps Emerson and Hobbes sniggering in a corner, indicating that this is some sort of jape his buddies put him up to – then turns back to him. Tall, broad-shouldered, sandy-haired Achilles Tolliver. He’s what the gossip-hungry witches who work with Queenie would call _a catch_ : a large fish to reel in, because he’s young, single, with good teeth and a nice smile, and he looks like he could show a girl a good time.

And now, he’s presenting her with such an offer of a good time, when Tina has done absolutely nothing to pique his interest. In fact, the last time she talked to him, it was to berate him for the file that he’d failed to pass along to their superiors about a case they’d worked on together.

“You mean, to talk about work?” she asks, still unable to completely believe he’d want to talk about… anything else, really.

Achilles clears his throat and straightens his tie. “No, I mean – you know. _Drinks_. To have some fun.”

“Oh.”

She presses her lips together. She’ll have to carefully examine the series of events that could have possibly led to this situation, but later. Achilles is waiting for an answer, and it seems a bit cruel to leave him awkwardly standing at her desk like that.

_No, I can’t_ , is what she thinks. _My heart belongs to someone else_ , is what she feels. But there’s thinking, there’s feeling, and then there’s reacting, seizing the opportunity in front of you. God knows she’s gotten in trouble enough times because she didn’t react fast enough, letting tedious reasoning or heart-wrenching emotions halt her wand. And she’s just been reinstated as an Auror, meaning she’s supposed to have learned from her mistakes.

Although, she perceives with a hint of acrimony and a juvenile thirst for revenge, none of these reasons would matter if she didn’t have a certain letter burning a hole in her nightstand drawer.

“Sure, why not?”

*

It was a compromise of sorts, Tina thinks as cream is applied to her newly trimmed hair. (It’s meant to smooth it over, to help make it straight and shiny, sharp even, like a sort of weapon of seduction, though the hairdresser used less aggressive imagery. Tina will _enchant her beau_ , is what she said, then showed her a selection of blood-red nail polish vials.)

She left it up on in the air, this idea of getting drinks together, hoping either Achilles would forget about it, or she would have significant reasons to change her mind. Hoping, if she’s being honest, for another letter that would miraculously smooth over the last, make everything simple again.

She tries to pinpoint a moment when Newt’s tone changed. It’s not exactly a moment she finds, but filaments, like algae progressively making the waters murky. Editing the book for publishing was taking up so much of his time that he had been forced to go through the grueling process of hiring an assistant to help him take care of his beasts; a book launch would have to be organized; there would be photographers, journalists asking questions.

_I realise I must do this in order to alleviate the plight of those who are the ones deserving this obnoxious attention – smile, pose, patiently explain, shape myself into someone presentable and indeed, palatable to the largest number of readers._

But it wasn’t only that. There was something else – or rather someone. Newt had only mentioned Theseus in passing, up until he brutally unleashed a torrent of resentment. What could have possibly happened to trigger such a reaction? It didn’t make any sense to Tina, but then that was hardly the worst part of it.

_I can’t help but think of your closeness to Queenie whenever I’m confronted to my own failings in creating a worthwhile relationship with my own sibling, though I would be tempted to say it’s as much his fault as mine. Theseus doesn’t understand that pushing head-on isn’t a strategy that can be applied to all areas of life, for example when he repeatedly invites me to dinner – he’s engaged now, so he considers it a sort of duty to have his fiancée choose the right linen and silverware, open a bottle of the good wine, play house, so forth – not caring that I’d rather spend the evening face-to-face with a Manticore, for at least a Manticore wouldn’t talk my ear off about how I have to find myself a nice girl to marry and settle down into a lifetime of boredom before devouring me . But in the end, it’s tragically unsurprising, coming from an Auror, and if anyone perfectly embodies the arrogance and conformity of that bunch of careerist hypocrites, it’s my brother._

No, the worst part was undoubtedly receiving this a week before she herself was officially named an Auror again, though she wasn’t exactly thrilled about his comment on the tedium of a committed relationship.

Perhaps then, it’s only possible to pinpoint the moment _she_ started to doubt whether he felt the same for her as she did for him. But even so, she wouldn’t be sitting in this chair, making herself beautiful for a date with Achilles Tolliver, if push hadn’t come to shove.

“So, Tina, are you free on Saturday?”

It’s _Tina_ now, not _Goldstein_. Achilles pronounces it pointedly, like he does everything else, and punctuates it with a confident smile. None of the quiet breathlessness, the mouth that hesitates but the eyes that don’t – plunging into hers, clear and soft… None of that, not anymore.

“Yeah, Saturday’s great. Just drinks, or you want to have dinner too?”

*

“Oh!”

Tina is hanging the laundry to dry when she hears Queenie give a startled little gasp. She turns around, but nothing seems amiss – just her sister sitting at the table, reading _Spellbound_. Queenie catches her eye and quickly pulls the magazine to her lap, away from sight.

“What is it, Queenie?”

“Nothing,” she replies, too quickly. “Nothing that would interest you, at least.”

“Tell me what you’re reading.”

“Really, Teenie, it’s just a silly magazine.”

The two sisters gauge each other for a moment. Queenie is a skillful liar, but she barely even tries with Tina, who’s always been able to see right through her baby blue eyes and guileless smile. This isn’t really an attempt at concealment: it’s a stand-off where Queenie’s hoping Tina will think it’s not worth the trouble to call her out on it and back down.

It usually works with _This adorable little dress was half off,_ _a real bargain_ , because Tina has heard it so many times it’s almost become a joke between them, and her sister is old enough to take care of her finances herself.

Less so when Queenie says _I'm going out for groceries._ This is relatively new, sparingly used, and a cover for going to see Jacob. Tina hasn’t openly confronted her, not only because she makes no effort to conceal the disapproval in her mind – in fact, she _wants_ her sister to know exactly what she thinks of it – but she’s also starting to suspect, from Queenie's reddened eyes and defeated demeanor when she returns, Jacob's own reluctance to put the woman he loves in danger.

_Just a silly magazine._ That's the first time Queenie has ever called _Spellbound_ silly. Which means there's definitely something in there she doesn't want Tina to see. And there’s only one thing she would possibly want to protect her from. Tina whips out her wand.

“Accio _Spellbound_.”

“Hey! Teenie, give it back!”

Tina catches the magazine and looks at the cover. Newt’s face – or at least an unsettling, handsomer version of it – grins back at her, just another reader of celebrity news. _Beast Tamer Newt to Wed!_

The ground wavers for a moment, but Tina is absolutely still as she turns the pages until she lands on a picture of Newt, presumably taken during his book launch, standing next to a beautiful woman she recognizes all too easily. She reads the caption nonetheless, and it feels like hammering the nail down on her own coffin: _Newt Scamander with fiancée, Leta Lestrange; brother, Theseus; and unknown woman._

Well. Nothing for it. She sets the magazine down, then picks it up again, her brain frantically searching for an explanation and finding none. A clue, then? Did she miss something in one of his letters? He said his brother was engaged, but nothing about him, she’s sure of it. Did this happen after she failed to reply to that letter? _Because_ she failed to reply? Or was she just silly to hope when he was telling her not to all along, too kind to come out and announce that he was in a relationship with Leta Lestrange, the love of his life?

“Oh no, Teenie, I’m sure she’s not -”

“Shut up, will you?” Tina exclaims, suddenly furious. “Just _shut up_ for once in your life!”

Queenie rises from the table abruptly, her face a mask of cold rage. “I’m going out for groceries,” she snaps, and slams the door behind her.

*

“Oh, you look simply _divine_!”

The hairdresser swivels the velvet chair and Tina looks at herself in the mirror, sleek and glossy as a movie poster. She barely recognizes herself, and decides that’s a good thing.

“I like it,” she says, attempting a smile to see how it matches the rest. “I really like it.”

“So, when’s your date?”

“Tomorrow night. But I’m thinking… maybe I should buy a dress or something? This sounds silly, but none of what I have goes with this haircut.”

“I know what you mean. Go to Irma’s, it’s just around the corner – if you tell them I sent you, they’ll give you twenty-five percent off.”

Tina thanks the witch, stands from the chair, and goes to pay, feeling – not exactly _happy_ , but lighter, more resolute, and determined to enjoy herself on her date, so much so that Achilles Tolliver will sweep her off her feet and make her forget the rest.

Yes, she’ll forget the magazine, she thinks as she walks along the street. She’ll forget the heartache and the misunderstandings, the vain hope and the little things she swore she never would – Newt deftly rolling up his shirtsleeves with those elegant, dexterous fingers of his, the tawny color of his hair lit by the sunshine of a savanna, the gentle way he tucked a lock behind her ear as they parted.

She’ll forget so much that when she sees his book in a shop window, one sunny spring day as she’s walking hand in hand with her boyfriend, she’ll be surprised, and say _how_ _nice_ _, I used to know him, had quite an adventure once when he came to New York, funny guy._

She won’t say anything about the letters. She won’t say anything about the only one she’s certain she’ll never be able to throw away, the shortest of them all, one he sent her right before everything unraveled.

  
_My dearest Tina,_

 _  
_ _With the manuscript out of the way I'm finally free to tend to the_ _Bowtruckles_ _myself, but for some reason I’m_ _finding_ _it difficult to concentrate on the task at hand before sending you a letter informing you of this - my difficulty to concentrate on the task at hand._ _Forgive my constant circumventing. But oh h_ _ow tedious letters_ _are_ _to describe these small everyday occurrences,_ _for_ _one needs to accumulate a certain number to fill in several pages_ _and make the effort seem worthwhile_ _, when_ _in fact_ _I wish_ _you were here with me so I could_ _tell you about every single one as they happen._

 _  
_ _Ever yours,_

 _  
_ _Newt_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this story! Let us celebrate the precious, delicate, angst-filled, slow burn wonder that is Newtina, they don't get nearly enough fic written about them. If you enjoyed my two one-shots, know that I'm working on a post-CoG chaptered fic and the first chapter should be up soon :)


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